Grilled Pizza

I have been bouncing around the idea in my head for a while and I finally got around to cooking a pizza on my Ugly Drum Smoker. My first attempt was not with out incident, I managed to burn my hand pretty good while trying to get a good fire going in the fire basket. I believe I will go ahead and do some more work to the basket so i don't do that again. Anyways back to the pizza, it was delicious! It had a wonderful touch of smoke and a very nice crispy crust, the three of us devoured this pizza. I do believe I will be buying a pizza stone specifically for the grill so I can get even more of that wood stove flavor. 

I did also learn that you will either want to let your wood chunks burn down or simply use plain lump  charcoal, the smoke coming from even one small piece of wood could be to much when baking breads this way.

Pizza dough

1 package active dry yeast

1 cup warm water

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons olive oil

2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon cornmeal

Directions

Dissolve yeast in warm water in warmed mixer bowl. Add salt, olive oil, and 2 1/2 cups flour. Attach bowl and dough hook to mixer. Turn to Speed 2 and mix about 1 minute.

Continuing on Speed 2, add remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, and mix until dough clings to hook and cleans sides of bowl, about 2 minutes. Knead on Speed 2 about 2 minutes longer.

Place dough in greased bowl, turning to grease top. Cover. Let rise in warm place, free from draft, about 1 hour until doubled in bulk. Punch dough down.

Brush 14-inch pizza pan with oil. Sprinkle with cornmeal. Press dough across bottom of pan, forming a collar around edge to hold toppings. Add toppings as desired. Bake at 450ºF for 15 to 20 minutes. 

As seen in the Kitchenaid Instructions and Recipes book.

Calzones

We love Calzone's, well my wife and I do, my daughter wasn't so big on it. I think it was due to not being a big fan of crust, and Calzone's are pretty much all crust. We did have a blast making these and I am definitely going to be buying a pizza stone exclusively for my UDS, because I would love to have on of these wood fired. I followed the pizza dough recipe, but simply put all my toppings on one half of the pizza dough and folded it in half to make a calzone. Then baked for the same amount of time, I believe I will try doing either an egg wash next time to try and brown up the outside a little more, I like a nice crunch to the crust on my calzones.

Pizza dough
1 pachage active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon cornmeal
 Directions
Dissolve yeast in warm water in warmed mixer bowl. Add salt, olive oil, and 2 1/2 cups flour. Attach bowl and dough hook to mixer. Turn to Speed 2 and mix about 1 minute.

 Continuing on Speed 2, add remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, and mix until dough clings to hook and cleans sides of bowl, about 2 minutes. Knead on Speed 2 about 2 minutes longer.

 Place dough in greased bowl, turning to grease top. Cover. Let rise in warm place, free from draft, about 1 hour until doubled in bulk. Punch dough down.

 Brush 14-inch pizza pan with oil. Sprinkle with cornmeal. Press dough across bottom of pan, forming a collar around edge to hold toppings. Add toppings as desired. Bake at 450ºF for 15 to 20 minutes. As seen in the Kitchenaid Instructions and Recipes book
 

Pizza Dough

I have been interested in getting into bread making, but I'm a little intimidated by the whole process since I'm not at all familiar with making bread. Well I decided to take the plunge and try pizza dough from scratch. I found the recipe in my favorite cook book, The Complete Cooking Light Cook Book, since it pretty much has a recipe for everything. The recipe is titled Basic Pizza Crust, which pretty much tells the whole story right there. The recipe was incredibly easy to follow and the end product is very nice crust that crisped up nicely and had a very pleasant chewy consistency. 

The day we made this pizza I got the whole family involved in decorating up our pizza. My little girl, Sammie, wasn't at all interested in evenly distributing the pepperoni she liked the grab and toss method. Which looked more like she was attempting to imbed the pile of pepperoni into the pizza. Needless to say we all had a blast making the pizza and even had more fun eating it.

Ingredients
1 package dry yeast (about 2 1/4 teaspoons)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup warm water (100º to 110ºF)
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, divided
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon olive oil
Cooking spray
1 tablespoon cornmeal

Directions
1. Dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water in a large bowl; let stand 5 minutes. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Stir 2 1/2 cups flour, salt, and oil into yeast mixture to form a soft dough.
2. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. knead until smooth and elastic (about 5 minutes); add enough of remaining flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, to prevent dough from sticking to hands (dough will feel tacky).
3. Place dough in a bowl coated with cooking spray, turning to coat top. Cover; let rise in a warm place (85º), free from drafts, 35 minutes or until doubled in size. (Press two fingers into dough. If indentation remains, the dough has risen enough.)
4. punch dough down; cover and let rest 5 minutes. Divide dough in half; roll each half into a 12 inch circle on a flour surface. Placed ough on two 12 inch pizza pans or baking sheets that are each coated with cooking spray and sprinkled with 1/2 tablespoon cornmeal. Crimp edges of dough with fingers to form a rim. Let ries 30 minutes. Top and bake according to recipe directions.
Yield: 2 (12 inch) pizza crusts, 4 wedges each (serving size: 1 wedge)
Calories 163

Easy Tomato-Basil Pizza

Here's another Kraft recipe that is absolutely delicious and well worth putting into the rotation of recipes. It's loaded with flavor and just light enough you don't feel guilty eating pizza. Then there's the fact that you can be eating in almost 30 minutes, which makes this great for a weeknight quickie and our little girl loved it!

This is probably the third recipe I've done from the spring Kraft Foods and Family magazine and the third with the new cooking creme's. When I first saw this from Kraft I was a little skeptical, I've just never had a store bought creme or really new what it was. But I have to say they are really good and there seems to be a nice variety of flavors, so the next time your at the store it's definitely worth trying out.

Ingredients:
1 ready-to-use baked pizza crust (12 inch)
1/2 cup Philadelphia Italian Cheese and Herb Cooking Creme
1 tomato, thinly sliced
8 fresh basil leaves, torn
1.2 cup Kraft Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

Directions:
Heat oven to 425ºF.
Spread pizza curst with cooking creme; top with remaining ingredients.
Place crust directly on middle oven rack.
Bake 10 to 12 min. or until cheese is melted.

Mexican Pizza!

This recipe is my take on the Casey's Taco Pizza that I have come to really enjoy. If you don't live near a Casey's Gas Station, I'm sorry because your missing out on some really good pizza. Which is something I didn't realize till just a couple of years ago when I started working at a fire station that had a Casey's right across the street from it, I even lived about 6 blocks from one for a number years and still hadn't tried it. My take on this recipe used a lot healthier choices than their pizza, but it was every bit as good. The only down side was that it didn't make the tot approved list, my little girl didn't even want to touch it. But strangely she was good eating all the items like shredded cheese and low fat re-fried beans off her plate, she just didn't like them all cooked on a pizza I guess.

I used this recipe as a way to use up some left over taco's that were setting in my freezer making it even all that much better.

Ingredients
Pre-made pizza crust
Re-fried Beans
Shredded Mozzarella
Shredded Cheddar Cheese
Taco Meat
Taco Sauce
Lettuce
Tomatoes

Directions
1. Spread enough re-fried beans to cover the pizza crust, just like pizza sauce.
2. Spread a 1/4 cup of taco sauce over the top of the re-fried beans, just enough to create a thin layer. Then sprinkle with mozzarella, cheddar cheese, and taco meat to cover and place in the oven. Bake the pizza according to the pizza crust instructions or until the cheese is melted.
3. When pizza is finished baking and cheese is melted, remove from the oven and slice. Next take chopped lettuce, tomatoes, and any other favorite taco toppings and place on the pizza.

Pizza

This is a twist of a recipe that I found in the Deceptively Delicious cook book. I’m sure I sound like a representative for her, but I’m not, my cooking decisions have been directed at finding good nutritious foods for my little girl. I do plan on branching out, I promise. Anyways, the original recipe was for Pita Pizzas and they were a big hit with the family. But making three to four personal pan size pizzas for dinner seems like a lot of work, and I don’t always have the room to cook them all at once. With that in mind I decided to make a large pizza, taking Jessica’s idea and applying it on a new scale, something I greatly enjoyed and look forward to doing again in the future. I don’t have time or the skills to make my own pizza dough, though I do plan on acquiring them at some point, when life slows down. Which is why I usually buy the prebaked wheat pizza crusts from the store, it’s healthier, quicker, and easier than making it. I also choose to cook the pizza on my gas grill, which simply gives you a crunchier crust and if you use a charcoal grill you will get that wonderful brick oven flavor. If you plan on doing this, you will want to look into some sort of pizza pan or a pizza stone. I have the pan, and it’s got a bunch of holes in it and it does a decent enough job. If you would like a picture of it let me know. Now, grill set up is pretty simple, you’ll want to do indirect cooking so simply shove the coals off to each side of the grill with a large alluminum baking pan in the center of the charcoal grate, and put the pizza in the center on the cooking grate. In a gas grill it works better if you have a grill that has multiple controllable burners, if so light the burners not directly under the pizza. You can even add, to both grills, wood chips for a little smokier flavor.

8 (4-inche) whole-wheat pita pockets (or use a one large whole wheat pizza crust)
½ cup spinach puree (any vegetable will work, I have used both and the thicker the puree the better)
2 cup bottled tomato sauce
2 cups thinly slice part-skin mozzarella

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees (in this case the grill)
2. Spread the spinach puree on each pita so that the spinach comes to within about ½ inch of the edge. Spread the sauce over the spinach; it should cover the spinach and come to within about ¼ inch of the edge of the pita. Now lay the cheese over the sauce, covering any place where the green comes through.
3. Place the pizzas on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake until the cheese melts and begins to brown, 5 to 10 minutes. Let the pizzas cool 5 minutes before serving so the cheese cools and doesn’t pull off (and the spinach stays completely invisible, well almost)